Celebrating Architecture

Who are our future designers? A programme of school workshops and a new film on widening access to creative education

Starts:

07:00pm, Tuesday, 17 July 2018

Until:

03:30pm, Thursday, 19 July 2018

This is a past event

Partners

The UK's creative industries are growing at almost twice the rate of the wider economy, yet despite this creative education is in crisis. In a recent BBC survey, one-third of state secondary schools reported cutting lessons in design, technology, music, art, and drama citing funding cuts and new accountability assessments that favour traditional academic subjects. The economy of the future will be driven by creative innovation and technology, but soon British school pupils may have no access to those subjects except at rare elite establishments as "Progress Eight" subjects push creative learning off the curriculum entirely.

Celebrating Architecture is a programme supported by The Architecture Foundation, Royal College of Art and the Mayor of London. In partnership with Urban Learners, it will deliver a series of architectural design workshops with London schools intended to demonstrate the potential of creative learning in the classroom and the opportunities of a career in design. 

The programme will be launched with the premiere of an original film "Architecture for All" produced by the Architecture Foundation following the work of secondary school teacher, Neil Pinder. An activist and educator, for fifteen years Neil has taught design at Graveney School in South London. He is passionate about diversity in architecture and has been running architecture workshops for his students inspiring a new generation of young designers from a wide range of background. He argues that more must be done to support young people from BAME and working-class families to be involved in growth industries such as architecture, technology and product design, giving them the tools and skills to shape the environment in which they live. 

Architecture for All follows Neil and his alumni exploring the future of British creative education including interviews with specialists in design, local government and teaching. It presents an alternative manifesto for British creative education and the future of diversity in the creative economy.

For more information about the film Architecture for All including attending the premiere, please write to phineas@architecturefoundation.org.uk.

For more information about the Celebrating Architecture please write to celebrating@urbanlearners.org.